R.B. Bennett

Richard Bedford Bennett, 1st Viscount Bennett PC KC (July 3, 1870 – June 26, 1947) was a Canadian lawyer, businessman, politician, and philanthropist. He served as the eleventh Prime Minister of Canada from August 7, 1930 to October 23, 1935, during the worst of the Great Depression years. Following his defeat as prime minister, Bennett moved to England, and was elevated to the British House of Lords.

By defeating William Lyon Mackenzie King in the 1930 federal election, he had the misfortune of taking office during the worst depression of the century for the country and the rest of the world. Bennett tried to combat the depression by increasing trade within the British Empire and imposing tariffs for imports from outside the Empire, promising that his measures would blast Canadian exports into world markets. His success was limited however, and his own wealth and impersonal style alienated many struggling Canadians.

When his Imperial Preference policy failed to generate the desired result, Bennett's government had no real contingency plan. The party's pro-business and pro-banking inclinations provided little relief to the millions of increasingly desperate and agitated unemployed. Despite the economic crisis, Laissez-faire persisted as the guiding economic principle of Conservative Party ideology. Government relief to the unemployed was considered a disincentive to individual initiative and was therefore only granted in the most minimal amounts and attached to work programs. An additional concern of the federal government was that large numbers of disaffected unemployed men concentrating in urban centres created a volatile situation. As an "alternative to bloodshed on the streets," the stop-gap solution for unemployment chosen by the Bennett government was to establish military-run and -styled relief camps in remote areas throughout the country, where single unemployed men toiled for twenty cents a day. Any relief beyond this was left to provincial and municipal governments, many of which were either insolvent or on the brink of bankruptcy, and which railed against the inaction of other levels of government. Partisan differences began to sharpen on the question of government intervention in the economy, since lower levels of government were largely in Liberal hands, and protest movements were beginning to send their own parties into the political mainstream, notably the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and William Aberhart's Social Credit Party in Alberta.

Bennett hosted the 1932 Imperial Conference in Ottawa. It was attended by the leaders of the independent dominions of the British Empire (which later became the Commonwealth of Nations). This was the first occasion the conference was held outside the British Isles. Bennett dominated the meetings, which were ultimately unproductive, due to the inability of leaders to agree on policies, mainly to combat the economic woes dominating the world at the time.

A nickname that would stick with Bennett for the remainder of his political career, "Iron Heel Bennett," came from a 1932 speech he gave in Toronto that ironically, if unintentionally, alluded to Jack London's socialist novel:

What do they offer you in exchange for the present order? Socialism, Communism, dictatorship. They are sowing the seeds of unrest everywhere. Right in this city such propaganda is being carried on and in the little out of the way places as well. And we know that throughout Canada this propaganda is being put forward by organizations from foreign lands that seek to destroy our institutions. And we ask that every man and woman put the iron heel of ruthlessness against a thing of that kind.

Reacting to fears of Communist subversion, Bennett invoked the controversial Section 98 of the Criminal Code of Canada. Enacted in the aftermath of the Winnipeg General Strike, Section 98 dispensed with the presumption of innocence in outlawing potential threats to the state, specifically, anyone belonging to an organisation that officially advocated the violent overthrow of the government. Even if the accused had never committed an act of violence or personally supported such an action, they could be incarcerated merely for attending meetings of such an organization, publicly speaking in its defense, or distributing its literature. Despite the broad power authorized under Section 98, its targeted specifically the Communist Party of Canada. Eight of the top party leaders, including Tim Buck, were arrested and convicted under Section 98 in 1931. This plan to stamp out communism however, backfired and proved to be a damaging embarrassment for the government, especially after Buck was the target of an apparent assassination attempt. While confined to his cell during a prison riot, despite not participating in the riot, shots were fired into his cell. When an agit-prop play depicting these events, Eight Men Speak, was suppressed by the Toronto police, a protest meeting was held where activist A.E. Smith repeated the play's allegations and was consequently arrested for sedition. This created a storm of public protest compounded with Buck being called as a witness to the trial and repeating the allegations in open court. Although the remarks were striken from the record, they still discredited the prosecution's case and Smith was acquitted. As a result, the government's case against Buck lost any credibility and Buck and his comrades were released early and fêted as heroic champions of civil liberties.

Having survived Section 98, and benefiting from the public sympathy wrought by persecution, Communist Party members set out to organize workers in the relief camps. Camp workers laboured on a variety of infrastructure projects, including such things as municipal airports, roads, and park facilities, along with a number of make-work schemes. Conditions in the camps were abhorrent, not only because of the low pay, but the lack of recreational facilities, isolation from family and friends, poor quality food, and the use of military discipline, which made the camps feel like penal colonies. Communists thus had ample grounds on which to organize camp inmates. The Relief Camp Workers' Union was formed and affiliated with the Workers' Unity League, the trade union umbrella of the Communist Party. Camp workers in BC struck on 4 April 1935 and, after two months of protesting in Vancouver, began the On-to-Ottawa Trek to bring their grievances to Bennett's doorstep. The Prime Minister and his Minister of Justice, Hugh Guthrie, treated the trek as an attempted insurrection, and ordered it to be stopped. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) halted the Trek in Regina on 1 July 1935 by attacking a crowd of 3,000 strikers and their supporters, resulting in two deaths and dozens of injured. All told, Bennett's communist policy would not bode well for his political career.

Following the lead of President Roosevelt's New Deal in the United States, Bennett eventually followed suit as even mainstream economic thinking was changing in order to better cope with the global depression. The Bennett government introduced a Canadian version of the "New Deal," involving unprecedented public spending and federal intervention in the economy. Progressive income taxation, a minimum wage, a maximum number of working hours per week, unemployment insurance, health insurance, an expanded pension programme, and grants to farmers were all included in the plan. Bennett's conversion, however, was seen as too little too late, and he faced criticism that his reforms either did not go far enough, or that they encroached on provincial jurisdictions laid out in Section 92 of the British North America Act. The courts, including the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, agreed and eventually struck down virtually all of Bennett's reforms. However some of Bennett's initiatives last to this day, including the Bank of Canada (which is responsible for the money supply and monetary policy), and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.